Ted Cruz in 2014 State of the Union address

On Government Reform: Obama dishonors Constitution by bypassing Congress

Yet rather than honor this duty, Pres. Obama has openly defied it by repeatedly suspending, delaying and waiving portions of the laws he is charged to enforce. When Obama disagreed with federal immigration laws, he instructed the Justice Department to cease enforcing the laws. He did the same thing with federal welfare law, drug laws and the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

On many of those policy issues, reasonable minds can disagree. Obama may be right that some of those laws should be changed. But the typical way to voice that policy disagreement, for the preceding 43 presidents, has been to work with Congress to change the law. If the president cannot persuade Congress, then the next step is to take the case to the American people

On Government Reform: Obama's executive orders is open door for future lawlessness

But this should not be a partisan issue. In time, the country will have another president from another party. For all those who are silent now: What would they think of a Republican president who announced that he was going to ignore the law, or unilaterally change the law? Imagine a future president setting aside environmental laws, or tax laws, or labor laws, or tort laws with which he or she disagreed.

That would be wrong--and it is the Obama precedent that is opening the door for future lawlessness. Because when a president can pick and choose which laws to follow and which to ignore, he is no longer a president.

On Health Care: Obama changed ObamaCare mandate deadline by a blog post

There is no example of lawlessness more egregious than the enforcement--or non-enforcement--of the president's signature policy, the Affordable Care Act. Mr. Obama has repeatedly declared that "it's the law of the land." Yet he has repeatedly violated ObamaCare's statutory text.

The law says that businesses with 50 or more full-time employees will face the employer mandate on Jan. 1, 2014. President Obama changed that, granting a one-year waiver to employers. How did he do so? Not by going to Congress to change the text of the law, but through a blog post by an assistant secretary at Treasury announcing the change.

On Health Care: Obama asked companies to disobey ObamaCare rules for a year

In other words, rather than go to Congress and try to provide relief to the millions who are hurting because of the "train wreck" of ObamaCare (as one Senate Democrat put it), the president instructed private companies to violate the law and said he would in effect give them a get-out-of-jail-free card--for one year, and one year only. Moreover, Obama simultaneously issued a veto threat if Congress passed legislation doing what he was then ordering.

In the more than two centuries of our nation's history, there is simply no precedent for the White House wantonly ignoring federal law and asking private companies to do the same.

On Jobs: Raising minimum wage by executive fiat opposes rule of law

The president's taste for unilateral action to circumvent Congress should concern every citizen, regardless of party or ideology.

Rule of law doesn't simply mean that society has laws; dictatorships are often characterized by an abundance of laws. Rather, rule of law means that we are a nation ruled by laws, not men. That no one--and especially not the president--is above the law. For that reason, the U.S. Constitution imposes on every president the express duty to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."